Educational Science

Florida officials cordon off park for annual snake orgy

Valentine's Day is behind us, and Cupid has trained his bow on the lakes, rivers and swamps of Florida. That's right: It's snake orgy season. Every spring, the water snakes of Florida (genus Nerodia) slither out of their waterside trees to look for love around the state's countless freshwater coasts....

Rare, 2-headed snake discovered by Florida house cat

What has two brains, no legs and the best profile pic on Facebook? That would be this rare, two-headed racer snake recently discovered by a house cat in Palm Harbor, Florida. The cat's family was rudely introduced to the supernatural serpent about a month ago when their cat, Olive, dropped...

Rat snakes are medium-to-large, nonvenomous snakes that kill by constriction. They pose no threat to humans, and as their name implies, rats are one of their favorite foods. There are Old World (Eastern Hemisphere) and New World (Western Hemisphere) rat snakes, and the two types are genetically different. New World...

Snake photos: Pythons swallow crocodiles and other animals … whole

Deer, crocodiles and even a human are just some of the odd meals engulfed by pythons. How do they gorge on such giant fare? Python snakes don't dislocate their jaws (a common myth), but instead rely on the springiness of the tissues connecting their jawbones. Unlike in mammals, python snakes...

Would you eat a python to save the Everglades?

Floridians could begin seeing a new slithery item on their menus — Burmese pythons. The invasive species is so out of control in the state that the government may begin encouraging the new meal as a way to help keep the snake's numbers under control, as long as they aren't...

Why did more than 90 rattlesnakes move into a California home?

A homeowner in California got a surprise after calling a reptile rescue to handle a few rattlesnake sightings in their home: They were sharing their space with at least 92 of the snakes. Sonoma County Reptile Rescue director Al Wolf pulled 22 adult rattlesnakes and 59 babies from the house's...

Sexually frustrated sea snakes mistake scuba divers for potential mates

A scuba diver off Australia noticed some odd behavior whenever he came into contact with male sea snakes: The venomous reptiles would coil around his fins, licking the water around him and even sometimes chasing him underwater. Now, he knows why: It was mating season, and the males thought he...

Watch a python swallow an impala whole in this jaw-dropping video

An incredible video shows an African rock python (Python sebae), one of the largest snake species on the planet, slowly swallowing an impala whole. The video, recorded in MalaMala Game Reserve in South Africa, shows the snake's head slowly slinking across the impala's body as the snake seems to magically...

Masquerading, deadly snake discovered and named after shape-shifting Chinese goddess

A deadly new snake has been discovered after spending decades masquerading as a much less dangerous species, according to researchers — who named the snake after a shape-shifting serpent goddess from a Chinese folktale. The new species is a type of krait snake found in Southwest China and northern Myanmar...